1. Technical Field
The present application relates generally to an improved data processing system and method. More specifically, the present application is directed to a system and method for enabling storage area network (SAN) component migration.
2. Description of Related Art
A storage area network (SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices (such as disk arrays, tape libraries and optical jukeboxes) to servers in such a way that, to the operating system, the devices appear as locally attached. Modern SANs are very complex having many different components with complex dependencies between the storage subsystems, switches, directors, and host systems. A change to any one of these components without the appropriate configuration within the SAN can “break” the SAN causing a business or organization's computer system to become partially or even wholly inoperable.
Thus, whenever a SAN administrator needs to replace a component of the SAN, e.g. a host bus adapter (HBA), switch, directory, storage subsystem, or the like, they must proceed carefully. Typically, the SAN administrator must manually reconfigure the SAN to utilize the new replacement component, which may not be able to use the same configuration as the component that it is replacing. To reconfigure the SAN, the SAN administrator must use multiple user interfaces with multiple manual steps, keep track of and enter many different component identifier numbers in various places to achieve the required configuration, configure ports, mappings, zones, etc., in order to achieve a desired result. Thus, there are many possible sources of error.
Moreover, the complexity is increased by the fact that SANs are typically compartmentalized such that the same SAN administrator is not responsible for all of the components of the SAN and may not even have authority to modify the configuration of all components of a SAN. For example, one SAN administrator or team may be responsible for the configuration of host systems of the SAN, another SAN administrator or team may be responsible for the switch and data communication infrastructure, and still a third SAN administrator or team may be responsible for configuring the storage subsystems. Thus, in order for a component to be replaced, coordination of these various SAN administrators or teams must be maintained such that each does the necessary work at the correct time to cause the SAN to be reconfigured to obtain the desired result.
These SAN administrators or teams typically must wait for a maintenance window, work in teams, and spend a great deal of time verifying their work. While this method of SAN reconfiguration in response to a replacement of a component works, it can be very expensive with regard to SAN administration labor costs and time. For example, if a particular business has their SAN equipment on a 3 year lease, they could be replacing ⅓ of their storage resources every year and spending thousands of dollars in labor costs to perform the replacement and reconfiguration.